6.2 |
Military planning for the invasion, January to March
2003
1.
This Section
addresses:
•
the
decision in mid-January 2003 to deploy a divisional headquarters
and three
combat
brigades for potential operations in southern Iraq;
•
the
commitment of those forces to a combat role in the initial stages
of the
invasion of
Iraq; and
•
the
principles of international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the
conduct of
military
operations, including discussions on delegation of authority for
targeting
decisions
during the air campaign.
2.
This Section
does not address:
•
the
campaign plan for the invasion, which is addressed in Section
8;
•
the roles
and responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Defence, the
Chief of
the Defence
Staff (CDS), the Permanent Under Secretary (PUS) in the
Ministry
of Defence
(MOD), and other key military officers and civilians, and the
way
in which
advice was prepared for Ministers and decisions taken in the MOD
in
2002 and
2003, which are set out in Section 2;
•
the
decisions on the wider UK strategy towards Iraq which are necessary
to
understand
the wider context surrounding military deployments. Those
are
addressed
in Section 3;
•
the UK’s
assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in late
2002
and early
2003, which is addressed in Section 4.3;
•
the
consideration of the legal basis for military action, which is set
out in
Section 5;
•
the
preparations to equip the force for operations in Iraq, and the
implications of
the
decisions between mid-December 2002 and mid-January 2003 to
increase
the size of
UK combat forces and be ready to take an earlier role in the
invasion
in support
of US forces, which are addressed in Section 6.3;
•
the funding
for the operation, which is addressed in Section 13;
and
•
the
planning and preparations for the UK military contribution
post-conflict,
including
decisions on the UK’s Area of Responsibility (AOR) for UK
military
forces,
which are addressed in Sections 6.4 and 6.5.
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